Discuss @RyanF 's latest review here
This isn't the place for it, but Worldwar (well the first three books of it) is still my favourite thing Turtledove's ever written and I will fight you over it. It's definitely a pulp embrace as you describe but there's nothing wrong with that.This is one of the books that convinces me that Turtledove is actually best as a YA novelist than anything else. How Few Remain is a bit like The Wheel of Time: a book ostensibly written for adults that is actually best enjoyed by ten to fifteen year olds who can inhale it whole, enjoying the showpieces and adventure without yet being annoyed at thin characters and repetitive prose.
When you return to it as an adult you notice the waste of much of the premise- the alliance systems frozen in amber, a surviving Mexican Empire that we never actually see, a CSA that more or less is a functioning republic with little to distinguish it from our timeline.
On the other hand- Teddy Roosevelt fighting cavalry battles with the British! Marines raiding San Francisco! Apaches fighting Jeb Stuart!
I suppose that's the sad thing about Turtledove. This and Guns of the South (and also, I suppose, the ghastly aliens invade WW2 books) pointed to a possible path where he embraced the pulpy adventure side of his works. Down that path would be further problems with the Lost Cause and probably with female characters, but the books would be light and fun.
Down another path would be a proper engagement with the scenarios he sets up, alternate history that actually looks at the consequences of a POD- the stuff with socialist Lincoln is genuinely interesting, for instance.
Instead, he's fallen between two stools. He's not nearly a good enough writer for 'serious' fiction, but he remains too po-faced even in light works like this for the adult reader to completely go along with the absurdity.
Still, I am fond of this book. I grabbed my uncle's copy when I was twelve and read it at least twice, and it made me power through quite a lot of TL-191 until I realised how bored I'd become. Which might be a backhanded compliment, but my point is that the goodwill it generated produced a lot of momentum....
Instead, he's fallen between two stools. He's not nearly a good enough writer for 'serious' fiction, but he remains too po-faced even in light works like this for the adult reader to completely go along with the absurdity.
Interestingly, this is the exact problem that a lot of technothriller writers, especially later ones have. They're not good or knowledgeable enough, and their works are too inherently out-there to be truly serious, but the sort of THIS IS RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES" pretentiousness keeps them from just being like Jon Land, Mack Maloney, or Jerry Ahern and running with the crazy. But I digress.
Of course, I've often felt that to an extent those don't work for a non-American audience because they're not there to tell interestingly different AH speculation, they're there to make a social history point to Americans that "there is nothing special or unique about the USA, its culture is a certain way in OTL because it didn't fight a war on home soil after 1860, but if that had continued, then the US would be just like Europe and would have a socialist party and conscription and your grandparents would have been living lives like this etc. etc."I wasn't remotely interested in whatever the interchangeable viewpoints of the later 191 books got up to, especially when the timeline parallelism made it all so predictable.
Of course, I've often felt that to an extent those don't work for a non-American audience because they're not there to tell interestingly different AH speculation, they're there to make a social history point to Americans that "there is nothing special or unique about the USA, its culture is a certain way in OTL because it didn't fight a war on home soil after 1860, but if that had continued, then the US would be just like Europe and would have a socialist party and conscription and your grandparents would have been living lives like this etc. etc."
He did use more books than necessary to make this point which is where criticism is fairer (the old canard that he did it to put his kids trhough college, etc.)
It's interesting one of Ryan's critiques is Turtledove's use of historically significant and senior characters over ordinary people, because I remember one of the biggest criticisms of the later TL-191 books when they first came out is that their protagonists were all ordinary people and the historically significant ones were in the background. I think that was borne of the idea that Turtledove's characterisations are often not very deep (zinc oxide passim) so How Few Remain was at least enlivened by the fact that we could look for references to these real historical figures' lives and how they were different.
Still, I am fond of this book. I grabbed my uncle's copy when I was twelve and read it at least twice, and it made me power through quite a lot of TL-191 until I realised how bored I'd become. Which might be a backhanded compliment, but my point is that the goodwill it generated produced a lot of momentum....
Interestingly, this is the exact problem that a lot of technothriller writers, especially later ones have. They're not good or knowledgeable enough, and their works are too inherently out-there to be truly serious, but the sort of THIS IS RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES" pretentiousness keeps them from just being like Jon Land, Mack Maloney, or Jerry Ahern and running with the crazy. But I digress.
The caveat I would apply is being consistent with what we know about the historical person. I could, for example, imagine Enoch Powell as an author of Greek-based myths. I couldn't imagine him writing with whimsy and frivolity and taking no account of cause and effect.
I can imagine Gary Sobers as a golfer. I can't imagine him being a golfer with the work ethic of Gary Player.
I'd say that's certainly true - I think there's a reason why one version of the synopsis on the back of American Front lists "a septuagenarian General Custer" among the characters. It's always interesting to speculate about people who died young in OTL but who were already famous, and how their lives would have gone later on. It even applies to people who died after achieving a lot but we can still speculate about their last years, as indeed with Lincoln in How Few Remain.80-year-old Custer was one of the most interesting characters in HT's WWI because you already have an idea of who the guy is.